Leafing through the autumn book announcements in a recent Quill and Quire, I was struck by the preponderance of upcoming non-fiction titles devoted to military history. Books about Canada at war – by both academic and popular writers -- dominated the list.

Has military history become the default position of history writing in Canada?

A few years ago, in his polemical Who Killed Canadian History? (1998), Jack Granatstein complained that military history was neglected in Canada. If that was true then, it certainly isn’t now. I have been writing history for 35 years and I don’t remember a time when the military attracted as much attention from writers and publishers. Not to mention the extensive CBC coverage of important military anniversaries, the endless war documentaries on War TV, aka the History Channel, and, most recently, Paul Gross’s $20-million-dollar war epic, Passchendaele.

I suppose this preoccupation with the military past has something to do with our presence in Afghanistan. Now that we are at war we want to be reminded of our warrior tradition. As well, the anniversaries of various Second World War milestones seem to have sparked a desire to revisit our participation in that conflict. Am I correct in sensing in the fervour of these commemorations an element of guilt that we have been neglecting our troops, both in the present and in the past?

What I find dispiriting about this preoccupation with military history is that it conforms to the liberal consensus that dominates our intellectual life. For the most part, military history avoids contentious issues that ignite disagreement and conflict. It is unashamedly patriotic and self-congratulatory. No one can object to books and movies that empathize with our troops and celebrate their efforts. Honouring our military history is fair enough. But not, I hope, to the extent that it squeezes out other subjects that examine more controversial aspects of the Canadian past.